Alice’s Chat #2 – Go meditate

Lately shared governance experiments are becoming popular and institutionalized and that’s really cool! But we’ve been testing for a while now and we’re getting feedback. Let’s not make the same mistakes again. I’d like to talk about benevolence. It seems that it is a prerequisite for managers, that you can get it with a training at only 3100€ for 2 days. “A benevolent leader increases the sense of well-being of his team members.” Kalliance Do you have your Benevolence certificate? Shared governance empowers us, gives us back power, gives meaning to our actions. They say that benevolence is a pillar of cooperation. So be it. What better quest than to be a benevolent person? What bothers me is when benevolence is considered a prerequisite that can be trained through personal development practices such as meditation. Kindness as a hards skill? 0o The way we try to teach benevolence through expert communication techniques through body and speech can quickly drift into a tool for controlling individuals within a group. This reminds me of the positive thinking movement unmasked by HappyCratie. “Happiness can be built, taught and learned: this is the idea to which positive psychology claims to confer scientific legitimacy. It would be enough to listen to the experts and apply their techniques to become happy.” In this essay, we understand, among other things, how positive thinking clears the system of your misfortunes. The solution is within you it seems. Ok, I will meditate tomorrow morning but right now, this is the system I would like to discuss. If we don’t know a magic formula in terms of governance, we know that there are at least two essential ingredients that we sometimes forget: honesty and time. In my humble experience, I have seen benevolence used as a shield against dissonant sounds. I have seen it used as a tool to manipulate the disruptive Other. I think that the abuse of benevolence is a symptom of a lack of empathy, undermines intellectual honesty and is a generator of taboos, standardization of opinions and oppression of minorities of thought. Otherness is a richness. Open your mind, not your chakras.